pure sentiments blend together, what is that but two sweet voices
singing? To be able to appreciate properly the emotion that held us,
it would be necessary to share the state of half sensuous delight into
which the events of the morning had plunged us. Admire for a long time
some pretty dove with iridescent colors, perched on a swaying branch
above a spring, and you will give a cry of pain when you see a hawk
swooping down upon her, driving its steel claws into her breast, and
bearing her away with murderous rapidity. When we had advanced a step
or two into an open space which lay before what seemed to be a grotto,
a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and
protected from its fury by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced
an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a sudden
noise awaking us in the dead of night.

We saw, sitting on a vast granite boulder, a man who looked at us. His
glance, like that of the flash of a cannon, came from two bloodshot
eyes, and his stoical immobility could be compared only to the
immutable granite masses that surrounded him. His eyes moved slowly,
his body remaining rigid as though he were petrified. Then, having
cast upon us that look which struck us like a blow, he turned his eyes
once more to the limitless ocean, and gazed upon it, in spite of its
dazzling light, as eagles gaze at the sun, without lowering his
eyelids. Try to remember, dear uncle, one of those old oaks, whose
knotty trunks, from which the branches have been lopped, rise with
weird power in some lonely place, and you will have an image of this
man. Here was a ruined Herculean frame, the face of an Olympian Jove,
destroyed by age, by hard sea toil, by grief, by common food, and
blackened as it were by lightning. Looking at his hard and hairy
hands, I saw that the sinews stood out like cords of iron. Everything
about him denoted strength of constitution. I noticed in a corner of